


A Military Man

by Merfilly



Series: Wintergreen DCU Free For All Table [1]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots of Wintergreen before Slade (and a bit because of Slade)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Military Man

Only sixteen years old, cut off from his family by choice, and with a chip on his shoulder the size of the world, it might not have been the best thing in the world for his mates to single him out for hazing. So what if he was the only Jew in the group? So what if he had no sympathy whatsoever for the ones falling behind? And so what if he kept setting a level of standards that none of the others could really match?

If they expected the youngest of them to just stand there and take a beating, they were sorely mistaken. William Wintergreen was a man who had decided not standing up for himself, for his principles was just a step away from a sin against mankind as a whole. And when their superiors arrived, they found half the class trying to disclaim knowledge, five boys at the bloodied Jew's feet, and fire in his eyes.

They moved Wintergreen to a different class the next day, accelerating his learning to get him out where that fire could do them some good faster.

* * *

The young soldier knew the way the military worked. You started with a task. If the task was a good one, with little risk and high reward, the top monkey kept it or awarded it to a favorite. If it was a dirty task, or one with little reward, or maybe one with too high a risk to life and limb, the task was passed from person to person in the chain of command.

This was called delegation, they said. The young soldier, a veteran now of the dirty, the risky, and the necessary, saw it as a barometer of how one stood in the army structure.

Still, Wintergreen knew how to excel, and how to survive. He could make delegation work for him.

* * *

Move. Fire...clip out. Eject and salvage, slam a new one home.

Fast sprint over the carnage, don't see it, don't remember the enemy is human too. Survival requires mind and body, don't break either.

Tearing fire, high...nothing vital. Tend it later, keep going. Objective is close, must get the information, must survive to pass it on.

Breathing's choked with exertion, running too hard, too long. Three more rounds, and a clear stretch.

Films taken from a dead hand, and fast retreat, leaving chaos and confusion for his cover. Final press of a detonator set at the onset, five seconds to get clear, and whatever pursuit there might have been is buried in a rain of concrete and dirt.

Special Ops, Wintergreen thought wryly, was bound to keep his life interesting, if short with this kind of work.

* * *

A man on the verge of getting married was a man in need of a last fling, it was explained to Wintergreen as his buddies hustled him into a pub. Tomorrow morning he was to marry a minor noblewoman, and so far none but he, the bride to be, and her father were aware her reputation was already compromised.

Partying among his fellow officers was a good way to relax from the fact that his dear bride-to-be was already trying to put limitations on his life.

Still, she was a small price to pay for furthering his bloodline, his own rebellion against Germany's attempt to annihilate his people.

* * *

"How am I to make a proper life for our son if you are always gone?" Margaret looked at her husband of scarcely two years with irritation bordering on outright vexation.

William Wintergreen merely shook his head. "You knew, my dear, that I was an officer with the SAS when you wed me."

"Not that I'd much choice in the matter, William."

He refrained from pointing out she had been just as eager for those stolen minutes when her mother had not been paying close enough attention to her daughter's whereabouts.

"Sidney will be taken care of, and should grow up proud in the idea his father is in service to His Majesty."

"I don't want mere name and financial support, William!"

"Woman, I will not resign my commission! My orders are cut!"

"Then I'll be sure your command has the papers for you as soon as I may," she snapped, before leaving him to finish packing his kit bag. He allowed himself a moment's closing of his eyes, made a mental note to see that one of his sisters kept an eye on the boy, and absolved himself of anything beyond being certain his money supported the boy into a proper life due him by his mother's bloodline.

* * *

He never approached marriage as a true partnership. He knew he would not be home enough for it to be so. From his first wife through his third, he had sought out women known in the better circles of society, women that would be of impeccable standards, so that his soldier's ways would not reflect badly on the offspring.

Never one to hedge his bets, a seduction and a surety of offspring was required before he firmly committed to the ladies, of course. Some, Slade included, might have thought that a bit mercenary or even manipulative.

Wintergreen saw it as protecting his children from the scandals of his own childhood. He did not ever want the fact his father had sold state secrets to haunt them. Never wanted them to pay for any of the choices he had made in protecting his mother, his sisters. If their mothers were of good families, they would be safe, no matter what he was.

He realized, once, as he signed the divorce papers to his third wife, the one he had arguably loved most, that a lot of it stemmed from never having forgiven himself for taken the coward's way out, of running away from his father, rather than confronting him and doing something about it.

He never let himself think on that aspect again.

* * *

There were three things that defined his life. Three concepts that abjured any other concept's interference.

Honor. That had been stripped from him as a child, by his father's lack of the same quality. Even in serving the cause his father had chosen, his father had lacked the true calling to give himself over to his path, and instead bartered himself cheap.

Duty. To regain honor, he chose duty. Duty to the King, then the Queen. Duty to himself, by preserving honor, and duty to those he had left behind, by keeping the stain from their names. Duty, defined not always by military code, but by his own ethics developed in war and peace both.

Love. Duty led him to love, fleeting as it might have been in his marital relations. When all was said and done, what drove William Randolph Wintergreen to stay through the turmoil, through the emotional crises, through the tragedies, was love.


End file.
